Florida Department of Corrections

Florida keeps using unpaid prison labor to prepare for hurricanes
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Florida keeps using unpaid prison labor to prepare for hurricanes

ByEyes on Trafficking News

  As Floridians prepared for Hurricane Idalia to make landfall on the upper central coast earlier this week, several counties deployed unpaid prison labor, as they have in the past, to fill the sandbags used to prevent flood damage. At least four counties — including Lake County, Polk County, Taylor County and Flagler County — relied on…

“The Lesson Here Is That the System Is Cruel”: Keri Blakinger on Prison Journalism
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“The Lesson Here Is That the System Is Cruel”: Keri Blakinger on Prison Journalism

ByEyes on Trafficking News

From 2010 to 2012, Keri Blakinger was incarcerated in state and county correctional facilities for possessing a ​“tupperware of heroin.” Since then, she has gone on to work as a prison reporter at the Houston Chronicle, The Marshall Project and, most recently, the Los Angeles Times. In June 2022, Blakinger published Corrections in Ink, a memoir about…

National Guard heading to Florida prisons to help understaffed Department of Corrections
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National Guard heading to Florida prisons to help understaffed Department of Corrections

ByEyes on Trafficking News

TALLAHASSEE — The Joint Legislative Budget Commission voted Friday to approve sending Florida National Guard members — at least temporarily — to state prisons to address significant understaffing. Even before Friday’s vote, several House Democrats and others called the plan a short-term band-aid to solve a crisis. “Florida has ignored [the Florida Department of Corrections]…